


Schemers

by LadyKnightSkye



Series: Like a Bull Wyvern [1]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Canon Compliant, Erotica, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Time Skip, Spoilers, Spoilers up to Chapter 12 of the Game, Touching, Unresolved Sexual Tension, touch kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-07
Updated: 2019-08-07
Packaged: 2020-08-11 03:17:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20146723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyKnightSkye/pseuds/LadyKnightSkye
Summary: Claude tries his hand at comforting his favorite professor.Byleth tries her hand at seducing her favorite student.Lorenz and Hilda are just waiting for the fireworks.





	Schemers

**Author's Note:**

> I love stoic characters, and one thing I always head canon is that they love being touched. 
> 
> Basically I'm reveling in my touch kink. Have fun!
> 
> Story is un'betaed and was written during an episode of insomnia. Forgive me all my typos!

It wasn’t really a surprise that the monastery was almost uninhabitable. As the Golden Deer rummaged around, only some of the knight’s barracks looked lived in, and even then the last sign of habitation was long ago. Byleth had been tempted to take over those old quarters, but from the looks on Marianne and Hilda’s faces, she could tell some of her former students were not keen on the idea. So, she led them back to the old student’s barracks. The lower floor was a shambles, doors thrown wide by thieves and the wind. Leonie found some of her old things still sitting untouched after the long years, but other rooms looked ravaged by weather and wicked men.

  
Byleth’s room sat untouched. All she cared to take out of it was Jeralt’s old diary.

Instead, they set themselves up on the second floor. Lorenz spoke of going into the nearest village and purchasing messengers to take the news of their new circumstances to some of their old allies. From Claude’s short run down of the situation, Byleth understood that many of their old friends may not be able to rejoin them. Their allies in the Blue Lions were fighting a losing battle in Fearghus, and their allies within the Empire had either thrown in their lot with Edelgard or had to walk the fine line of betrayal.

  
As she started her fire in the dusty fire place, Byleth sighed. Her heart did not beat, but if still felt heavy. Emotion churned beneath that rock, tightening her chest until she felt like she couldn’t breath. She pulled her headpiece from her hair, throwing it across the room that years ago had belonged to some other lordling who had innocently laughed and smiled away the days that led to their doom. Claustrophobia still strangling her from the inside out, she tried to pull her cape off, but it got tangled in her arms, and she needed to breath, but something in her throat wouldn’t let her, and _she could not get off this damn -_

  
Warm hands clasped her arms just above her gauntlets. “Hey,” a warm voice said in her ear, “Hey, you’re okay, Teach. It’s okay.”

  
Finally, _finally_, a sob broke free. Jeralt said she’d never cried, and sometimes she railed to a now silent Sothis that she’d ever come to this place, because now she cried a lot. Oh, to go back to the days when the only person she cared about was the nigh invulnerable man she’d called Papa when it was just the two of them. But now she cried for her Papa, and Rhea, and Edelgard, and Claude, and Dimitri, and all her students. For the knights whose bodies they’d found once they’d dispatched all of the thieves. For the mummified remains she’d seen in the ruins of the old village and outer bailey. For the children trapped in beastly shapes by a wicked girl’s whims.

  
“Come on Teach, don’t cry,” Claude said as he guided her to the field roll on the floor. They’d found them in the knights’ barracks, and trusted the rolls of down-filled cloth more than the old mattresses that housed goddess-knew-what vermin. He knelt before her, still holding her arms. “It’s alright.”

  
Tears ran down her face. “I need my cape off,” she finally wheezed.

  
“Okay, we can do that.” Gently, almost reverently, he helped her get the offending garment off. She shivered when his fingers skimmed the back of her neck. Unbidden, he also helped rid her of her boots. Down to her bodice, shorts, and tights, she finally sat on her hip. Claude lowered himself to her bed roll, and out of curtesy he also removed his boots. He’d left his over coat in his room, and was only in his shirt sleeves.

  
For several long moments, she stared in fire, and he stared at her. As her tears slowed and her emotions settled into a dull throb, she finally turned to look at him. He was giving her a strange, puzzled look. “Tell me, Teach,” he said, “Would you have let anyone else see you like this?”

  
Byleth shrugged. “I don’t think I had much choice this time. I don’t recall inviting you into my room.”

  
“Well, ya know, when you hear what sounds like a wounded animal . . .” He gave her a pointed look.

  
Grimacing, she wiped her eyes and swallowed. “It’s just . . . two months. My entire world fell apart in two months, and this is the first time I’ve had nothing to do, no direction to go in, nothing to prepare for in that entire time. After . . . After Jeralt died, I had my vengeance and defending the church and teaching all of you. Then the business with being goddess touched, and then defending Garreg Mach. I never . . . I never really had any time to think about all of it. I always had another mission and now . . .”

  
He nodded. “It seems crazy that you’ve been sleeping for five years, but you did apparently have a goddess hanging out in your head, so who knows.” He reached out, and touched her cheek.

  
She froze, realizing that no one other than Jeralt had ever touched her so intimately. She’d been surrounded by men her whole life, but in the mercenary corps she’d always been the boss’s daughter and then his right hand man. Then, in the monastery, she had been a professor and Rhea’s favorite. There’d never been the inclination on her part, and everyone else had been too intimidated to make the first move. She had felt sexual desire before, sometimes thinking about the young men she infrequently came into contact with, but until she’d come to Garreg Mach, she’d never had the opportunity to flirt.

  
Until this boy - no, this man, sitting beside her. His touch was gentle, feather light. “Do you trust me, Teach?”

  
“Yes,” she replied simply, unable to be pithy in her state.

  
“Scoot up and sit criss-cross.”

  
She did as he bid, and he shifted to sit behind her. HIs long legs bracketed her and she heard the crack of his knuckles. She felt his hands on the crown of her head, strong fingers starting to work circles at her temples. He would work a few circles, and then draw his hands back, carding through her hair. His calluses caught the fine silken strands, but he was careful not to pull. His movements were slow, languid, unhurried. After a few passes, he moved to a point just above her ears, and repeated his ministrations.

  
When he got to her neck, he placed his hands on either side of her neck, fingers resting just below her jaw as he used his thumbs to rub down the back of her neck. The pressure was starting to hurt a bit as he got to tight muscles that refused to give up their tension. When she gasped, he whispered into her ear, “It’s okay. Just relax.”

  
The heat of him against her back soothed her and as her neck muscles finally released, she felt a liquid heat beginning to pool in her loins. As hands made strong by bow and sword worked her shoulders, conquering muscles and tendons held tight by five years of slumber and stress, her muscles below clenched and released in demand. For the first time in her life, someone was truly touching her, and she wanted more than his hands. Her lips parted, her breathing speeding up as he began to smooth his hands down her arms, rubbing away the tension.

  
After the first two, firm passes, the third pass down her arms was light. His fingers skimmed down, over her elbow, and then along her fingers. She watched, mesmerized by the contrast of her pale skin against his darker tone. He took her hands, and flipped them over so that her palms were face-up on her knees. Then he repeated the touch, this time letting his fingers skim over her palm. But this time, his hands, lingered, tracing back to her back without losing contact with her skin. Back down her arms, and then to her exposed mid-drift.

  
The puff of his breath against her ear caused her loins to clench hard. “I’d continue, but your bodice is in the way.”

  
She licked her lips. It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him to take it off, especially since she could feel the hard bar of his erection digging into her.

“Thank you,” she said instead.

  
“My pleasure,” he cooed into her other ear, his lips lingering close.

  
“Claude?”

  
“Mmhm?”

  
“Keep touching me please.”

  
He chuckled, “Won’t be hard to do, Teach. I’ve wanted to get my hands on you since I was a randy teenager here.”

  
She shivered as he traced the patterns of her lace tights. “Oh really?”

“Yeah,” he replied, his mouth still perilously close to her ear. “Don’t know when it started, but gods, the ball? When I got to dance with you? It was really hard not to go too far.”

  
“Like you are now?” She could have kicked herself. She didn’t want him to stop. In fact, if his hands would just stray a little farther up and to the middle . . .

  
His laugh was very amused. “Teach, I haven’t even begun to go too far!”

  
“I’ll take that as a challenge,” she said, and a part of her marveled at the amount of flirtation she put into that tone. She sounded more like Sylvain going after a girl than she did her usual self.

  
“Ummm,” he growled, “If I didn’t come in on a panic attack, maybe I take you up on that challenge.”

  
Byleth finally turned, look at him as reached up to pet her hair. He was leaning against the old bed, his relaxed posture belying the tension in his face. He wet and bit his lips as she watched, and she realized that he was trying his best not to kiss her. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes heavy lidded, and his nostrils were flared as he took deep, rapid breaths. She reached up, letting her fingers trace his well trimmed beard. “Do you mean to tell me that in the last five years, Claude von Riegan, the shiftiest, sneakiest lordling at Garreg Mach, is unwilling to play dirty?”

  
His eyes narrowed, and one hand tangled into her hair, holding it tight, but not cruelly. He leaned in, his lips hovering a hairsbreadth above hers. “You are too important to me for me to use unfair schemes to win you into my bed.”

  
Byleth smiled. “Who said anything about a bed? I just want a kiss,” she said with a smile, pushing her head back into his hand so that he would allow her to pull away a bit. “I’ve never kissed anyone before. I think you might just be worthy enough to be my first.”

  
“You place a lot of value on one kiss,” he murmured. “But no, no kisses. If I kiss you right now, it will end with me riding you harder than a wyvern.” His voice was low, a gravelly vow.

  
Her loins clenched again, and this time she whined in the back of her throat. “Please?” Part of her wanted to forget. Part of her was unbearably turned on. “I want you.”

  
His growl was vicious and almost inhuman. The hand in her hair tightened, and pulled her face back away from his. His eyes burned into her. “No. When I have you, it’ll be because you want me for me, and not because I’m a convenient cock to help you forget and feel alive.”

  
Now, the fire was burning in her gut. How dare he speak to her that way? “Do you remember the night of the ball? When we met by the Goddess Tower?”

  
“What of it?” he asked, his voice harsh.

  
“I know you were bullshitting. I know the truth.”

  
He froze a little. “I know that the legends say that if _t__wo lovers_ pray at the Goddess Tower during the celebration, their wishes of marriage will come true.” She grinned as his eyes went wide then back to narrow.

  
“And you didn’t call me on it?”

  
“No,” she said simply, reaching back to guide his hand from her hair. Then she stood up, and walked to the door. “Because maybe, just maybe, I was nursing a crush on one of my star pupils, no matter how inappropriate it was. The heir to a dukedom would have more beautiful women falling at his feet than he knew what to do with, why would he want some awkward, stoic little mercenary that was _so sheltered, _he had to actually explain how the only religion in the land worked? I knew it was all for not, but hey, what could it hurt?”

  
As he rose, he winced, but it was a momentary expression. He grabbed his boots and strode to the door, as she opened it. He turned and braced his elbows on the door jamb. “You little schemer.”

  
“I’d say I learned from the best, but Jeralt wrote several stories on how I conned bakers out of biscuits and tray bakes when I was young.” She gestured with her chin to the hallway. “Don’t let the door hit your ass.”

  
“Aw,” he said, leaning down more to her level while still being braced in the doorway. “I never said I wouldn’t kiss you and give you the ride of your life, just that I wanted to wait for a more opportune moment. You were all about those in class.”

  
She reached up, lightly slapping his cheek. “Good night, Duke von Riegan.”

  
As soon as Claude reared back in confused insult, she slammed her door in his face.

  
Claude blinked at that door for a few moments before a low chuckle had him looking down the hall to his left. Hilda and Lorenz stood leaning against opposite walls. “Did things not go your way?” Hilda purred.

  
“I don’t know, he has his boots off, Hilda dear,” Lorenz said.

  
“What do the two of you want?” Claude snarled.

  
“Oo! Temper, temper!” Lorenz breathed in mock shock.

  
Hilda just grinned. “Let me guess, you put your foot in your mouth?”

  
Claude moved away from Byleth’s door, and leaned over to put his boots back on. “It’s not like that.”

  
Lorenz and Hilda shared a speaking look. “Oh, really? You’re not trying to court our dear Professor?” Lorenz pressed.

  
Sneering, stung by the subtle rejection laced within Byleth’s use of his title, he answered, “No.”

  
“Ah! Good, so I may press my suit of the lovely -“

  
Lorenz never got to finish his flamboyant declaration. Claude had him by the throat, pressed against the wall. Lorenz was a trained warrior, his body lean but strong. However, he had not been expecting the attack. He held still. “You will not go near her, understood?” Claude’s voice was jovial, but there was a tone of warning laced through it.

  
Lorenz nodded while Hilda covered her mouth in shock. Claude let go, and stalked off down to his room. The two in the hall shared another look while Lorenz massaged his neck. “He’s worse than a bull wyvern in rut,” Hilda muttered.

  
“Ah, idiots in love,” Lorenz murmured. “The best kind.”

  
Hilda glanced between Byleth’s door and Claude’s. “I bet my family’s best tea service that they’re fucking like bunnies before the week is out.”

  
“I think our dear Professor is more vindictive than you give her credit for,” Lorenz said. “So you’re on.”

  
Hilda gave him a once over. “You know, watching Claude manhandle you was . . . thrilling. Would you care to return to my room?”

  
Lorenz grinned. “Unlike Claude, I am not an idiot, and I take what I am offered. Lead the way, dearest Hilda, lead the way.”


End file.
